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About OMG! Nexus

Our Origin Story

Sean had an idea for several years, before starting Lasting First Impressions in 2010, for a different kind of gaming review. The purpose of LFI was not to give you a full-fledged game review after playing and finishing an entire game; you can go to any number of great gaming sites for such a review. What we aim to give you are our initial thoughts on a game after only one hour of solid game play, which does not include the obligatory opening cinematics or tutorial sections. Our lasting first impressions if you will. As parents, we often have very limited time available to play a game, which means new games must be able to grab our attention within that limited hour of play in order for us to want to come back to it. If the game doesn’t give any reason to come back the next day, why should we do so? There are too many other games that are worthy of our time and it is our intention to let you know which games deserve your time and which ones can be passed by.

After two and a half years, a successful podcast (The OMG! Hour), and new members joining the team, Sean felt it was time to branch out beyond LFI. Since Lasting First Impressions was created around a singular concept for a review, it didn’t fit well into Sean’s desire to expand his content and reach. Thus OMG! Nexus was born to bring the site and the podcast in line with each other to create an OMG! family. Officially launched in February 2013, OMG! Nexus replaces Lasting First Impressions as the site, but the LFI reviews still live on. Since then, we’ve expanded even further into an official spin-off show from The OMG! Hour called Lost Treasures of Gaming, and even into the TV arena with our newest podcast, Primetime.

May 2016, with the 200th episode of The OMG! Hour saw us open our YouTube channel at bit.ly/TheOMGHour where you can watch The OMG! Hour, see our weekly Lost Treasure segments, Loot Crate unboxing videos, and more!

Meet the Team:

Sean D. Evans

Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Host of The OMG! Hour, Lost Treasures of Gaming, Primetime, and Co-Host of Gamers Unscripted

Xbox Live, PSN, Steam: Xiantayne

I am a casual gamer and I have been one most of my life. My love of computers started with the Commodore VIC20 in 1980 when I was 9 years old (yeah, I’m that old!). My everlasting love of video gaming followed suit in 1982 with the advent of the Colecovision and the Commodore 64 (where I taught myself how to code). Believe it or not, I still have my Commodore 64, but over the years, all my game disks have gone missing so it’s essentially useless now. Throughout the years, I have had nearly all the mainstream gaming systems since the NES as well as the handheld devices.

As I got older my love of gaming never dwindled, but what has dwindled is my available time to play. I am the father of 3 beautiful girls and most of my gaming now comes after the family has retired for the night which only gives me an hour or so to play. And, to be honest, this is just enough for me to unwind at the end of the day. Now, don’t get me wrong, I can still play for hours on end when I’m given the chance but these chances are becoming rarer these days which is why I created this site and have never looked back.

Jeff Jenkins

Contributor and Co-Host of The OMG! Hour podcast

Xbox Live, Steam: SinnixPSN: Sinnix_Zero

Jeff is a dedicated game enthusiast, artist, father of 2 + 2 halves and co-host of The OMG! Hour podcast. He has worked along side great companies like Xbox Canada and ArenaNet and will continue to find ways to make the world a better place for gamers.

Syd Bolton

Contributor, Gaming Archaeologist, Co-Host of Lost Treasures of Gaming

Xbox Live: Dirk The DaringPSN:DirkTheDaringSteam:sydbolton

Long before starting the “Lost Treasures” segment in Episode 104 of The OMG! Hour, Syd Bolton had already been involved with the podcast. First, as a listener and then as a guest for lucky episode 13 (which weighed in at a lengthy two hours). Since then Syd has been on the show as a guest or a topic from time to time and now contributes regularly with game reviews and the weekly “Lost Treasures” segment – which helps you uncover games from the past that you might have missed and are worth giving a try.

Syd got into gaming early on with the Coleco Telstar, a clone of Atari’s pong in the 70’s and really hasn’t looked back since. His love for games was amplified with the Commodore 64 in the 80’s and stayed predominantly on the computers until Nintendo tried to drag him back to consoles with the NES, SNES, and N64. When the Xbox landed in 2001, however, Syd settled down and admitted to being a console gamer and, although he still plays PC games from time to time, his real love is gaming from the couch with a console.

As Canada’s top video game collector (with a collection exceeding 15,000 games in 2014), Syd spends a lot of his time researching about, purchasing, and talking about video games but does get to play quite a bit as well. As founder and curator of the Personal Computer Museum, Syd also loves talking technology and keeping up with the classics.

If all that didn’t keep him busy enough he is also a syndicated columnist with the Toronto Sun, a weekly contributor with Tech Talk on Rogers Television, and the manager of IT for two pharmaceutical companies during the day.

Diana Birsan

Contributor

Xbox Live, PSN: Limesplash

Diana currently works at a major Canadian television company as an Apple Administrator and doubles as a Post Sound Assistant. She is an avid gamer who first began gaming on PC with such old classics as Doom, Duke Nukem and the not so well known King’s Quest Series. She then later moved to console gaming when the N64 was released. Having previously worked at EB Games for 5 years, her collection of video games has grown to epic proportions and she is now in the loop with all console games. Currently, her favourite genre is Sci-fi with such titles as Mass Effect, Deus Ex and Dead Space. First person or third person never really matters as long as a good story is involved. With so many games being released every year, it has become increasingly difficult to play them all but it just means that she has to be increasingly picky about which titles merit the purchase, and that’s not always a bad thing.

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